


Some Great Perhaps

by hitlikehammers



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Multi, Romance, Spoilers, The Sign of Three
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 15:39:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“And where, exactly, do you think you’re going?”</i><br/> <br/> <br/>Sherlock, intercepted. Directly Post-The Sign of Three.</p><p> <br/><b>Episode Spoilers for 3.02: The Sign of Three.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Great Perhaps

**Author's Note:**

> Reactionary. I made it with my overtaxed emotions.
> 
> Make of it what you will.

“And where, exactly, do you think you’re going?”

At first, Sherlock thinks the voice is in his head: that lilting, laughing tone that makes him smile despite himself, that made him want to yearn and strive and reach to be better, to be selfless and selfish in just the right measures: to be like her; to be worthy of them both.

His coat’s half on as he turns, and she’s so very close, lit in technicolor against the dark. He can feel her breath against the night.

Mary's watching him, brow quirked. She looks amused, and yet, so sad.

It’s her wedding day. 

She should only be laughing.

He doesn’t know what to say.

“John tries very hard,” she says, and her eyes sparkle with more than the light from the reception, more than the moon and the stars; “But he’s no dancer.” 

And Sherlock never suspected he could want for himself like this—never fathomed that he could want _beyond_ himself. For another.

For more than one other.

Her hand on his arm is a surprise, of sorts. His own hand gravitates to her abdomen, innate, before he pauses, retreats.

She stops him. Folds his hand inside her own. He feels her ring, cool; he feels her lips on his palm, smooth.

“Did you think I married a man whose heart I didn’t know?” she asks, so soft, and she stares into him, through him, and it catches in the dark places on the inside of his flesh, tears off dead bits to leave him raw, but so alive.

“Before you came back, it was just the memory of you,” she tells him, and she’s beautiful, she is perfection, and she deserves John Watson in ways he never will. 

It’s better this way. This is better.

He imagines, he designs in the depths of his mind a future where he will believe this: a future where John will smile and a child will look at Sherlock in curiosity, at the least, and not in fear.

He imagines a future and demands that his mind accept it, approve it, where his heart never will.

“But then there was _you_.”

He starts. His eyes are on her, narrowed, observing the set of her jaw, the line of her neck.

He doesn’t see it coming, even as she leans.

He gasps into her mouth on his own, her hand on his cheek, and he’s dumbfounded, utterly, when she pulls back, radiates a fondness he cannot comprehend—she is John’s and this is not what happens, and yet there is no deceit in her, no line of hesitation or remorse.

He does not understand. 

And yet he wants it. He wants this to be his.

“Did you miss _those_ signs?” she asks, and his pulse races, his eyes are desperately wide. She’s looking at him with a quiet affection, and it’s overwhelming, because it is honest. 

It is honest, and it’s for _him_.

“When I accepted him, I knew I’d be accepting you, too,” she says, reaches up to cup his face and his eyes burn, desperately, and his lungs fight against what’s best for them, what they need.

“Did you really think you were anything less than a focal point of half the conversations I've had with him?” she asks, and the intensity of her gaze makes Sherlock’s blood sing, because it speaks of hope, of things not lost, not changed.

No: changed. But glorious for it. _Novel_.

“Did you think that I could love him, and not see the same glow in his eyes regardless of which of us he's watching? Did you think that I could so much as glance at you, and not read how you felt for him?” she asks calmly, eases his face, his forehead to lean against hers, and her lips brush the tip of his nose as she breathes:

“Did you think that I could know you, and not grow to love you just the same?”

He tenses, blinks, because this is not his, this is not for him; this night is _theirs_ and he’d prepared, he’d practiced, but this is _not_ —

“Breathe,” Mary whispers, her body close, her arms on him with a care that feels foreign and profound, and it’s not until she speaks the word that he realises he’s short of breath. “Breathe, love, and don’t leave my wedding.”

He glances at her, and he thinks he’s given her too little credit, because he reads in her face what she reads in his own. 

She takes a step back, just one.

Reaches out.

“May I have this dance, Sherlock Holmes?”

His heart leaps, frenetic. It feels heavy, like it wants to be noticed, wants to be captured, wants to shiver ecstatic for the rest of his days because it’s held, somehow: it’s wanted.

 _He’s_ wanted.

He looks at her, and on a whim, he looks beyond, and there’s John, silhouetted: breathtaking.

Smiling soft. Fond. Proud.

Sherlock breathes, and takes Mary’s hand, tightens his grip when she squeezes, smiles up at him as if he makes her happy, as if he’s capable of that, in a person, and perhaps.

He looks at John, whose smile grows.

Perhaps.

He takes her hand and walks with her, because he wants to. Because he must.

He made a vow.

And he does so love to _dance_.


End file.
